ABSTRACT
In rural areas as well as in urbanizing America, the "little man" or "common man" was seemingly being swept aside in the emerging capitalist order and disorder that accompanied it. The Common School Common schooling was more the ideological slogan of a reform crusade than it was a description of a particular type of formal educational institution. Politics and Common School Reform The notable early advocates of common schooling were found not among the teaching force, but in the ranks of state education officials, most of whom were members of the Whig party or men who advocated Whiggish ideas. The complexity of Horace Mann's personal makeup and the dazzling variety of arguments he used in favor of the common school work against any tendency to be simplistic in an analysis of his ideas. Mann was by far the most famous of all of the nation's common school reformers.
